Your Input on Clothing for Text Adventure

Project Ideas & Discussion
1

So I’m currently working on an open world text adventure that is to have about the level of content you’d find in a big title game such as Fallout or Saints Row, etc. For some background, it will be set between the year 2046-2049, the player character will be female and the player will be able to choose any of multiple lifestyle paths as a civilian, criminal, soldier and/or more, each of which will have numerous sub-paths - for example, as a civilian you can work at a bakery, be a taste tester, a model, a scientist, etc.

What I need help with is clothing ideas. There will be various shops and stores throughout the open world map from which the player can purchase clothing, tools, weapons, toys and more which will either be useful to the player’s chosen path or just fun miscellaneous items to interact with.
So give me some ideas on anything and everything from underwear to accessories, from casual to tactical, and from fashionable to utilitarian. And everything in between.
Give details and be specific. (colors don’t matter and clothes don’t have to be futuristic)
Thank you.

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2

What I would do to start is plan out outfits for each profession. Civilians could have business clothes, casual clothes, the work uniform for the bakery, and so on. What I would do is figure out all of the outfits you need, and then later break them up into the individual pieces of clothing later if you want to. I would also try to make it so each set of clothes has a weight where it looks good on them and gives them positive modifiers, where they are too fat for the clothes but can still wear them, which gives worse positive modifiers, and then an outfit they get if they outgrow the first which gives no modifiers but allows them to continue going to work in that profession, and a version of this outfit that gives negative stat modifiers. If you want to split up the outfits, then clothes that are size small give positive modifiers based on what they are and size large clothes give none, then negative if outgrown.

You can also mess with the formula a little bit based on profession. A model getting negative stats because she can’t fit into her outfit makes sense but maybe there is a job where you are better at it as a fatter person for some reason, or a job where it wouldn’t matter for the most part. Another idea I had based on this is the soldier could get defense bonuses when the armor fits the best, a dexterity bonus if she gets fat because she had to remove some pieces of armor to get in it, and then if she gets fatter than that, she gets put behind a desk and can either wear whatever she wants, or a civilian soldier type outfit.

3 Likes
3

It might be a hassle to implement, but dressing up as law enforcement could allow you access to places you wouldn’t normally get to and/or unlock different dialogue from actual officers.

Assuming weight gains a major element of the game, a catsuit for the criminal path would be a good way to show that off.

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4

Model could do either fitness or underwear modeling, then have to do the plus size variant of that type of modeling.

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5

Maybe a model could influence people’s outfits if she’s popular enough?

Given that this is the future, maybe you could include traditional foreign clothes as well as more western outfits, such as kimono and qipao dresses next to crop tops and leggings

6

I’ve already got clothing and uniforms by profession worked out for the most part. There will be a minimum of 5 sizes and two fitting styles, tight fitting and loose fitting. Using mathematical expressions i will be implementing a BMI system and certain clothing sizes and fits will be wearable or will tear/snap based on BMI.

As far as body armors are concerned, body armor will consist of mostly realistic gear such as vests, plate carriers and kevlar helmets with the only exception to this being juggernaut style armor that will cover most of the body similar to the armor worn by heavy gunners in Far Cry or Watchdogs (not too OP), and a lighter full body exo suit that will provide light armor with the benefit of protection from fire, explosive and energy-based weapons and additional item carry weight. Non-armor clothing won’t provide much in the way of stat boosts apart from item carry capacity (in pockets), sex appeal and mood (uncomfortable poorly fitting clothes may lead to a bad mood and possibly poor choices such as stress eating, but may also cause certain NPCs to either take or not take interests in the player character or deny quests until you get better clothing)… Clothing worn by NPCs can also be taken and used by the player, i.e. disguises.

Of course, getting too fat will have negative consequences if you are in the soldier or criminal professions, since most body armors and weapon holsters just simply aren’t designed for bigger people.

What I really need are just random ideas on miscellaneous clothing items and accessories.

Clothing slots will be:
Headgear - hats, helmets, etc
Eyewear - glasses, shades, etc
Face - masks, gas masks
Neckwear - scarves, bandanas, etc
Underwear - bras, panties
Undershirts, overshirts and coats with armor vests taking up the coats slot.
Pants/shorts/skirts (bottoms)
sock, leggings, stockings
Footwear - shoes, heels, boots
Wristwear - bracelets, watches
Gloves
belts
Purses/backpacks
Jewelry - earrings, necklaces, piercings, etc.
And more, plus i may also be adding in tattoo slots just because, even though it’s a TA
Some clothing items such as body armor vests and backpacks will be modular meaning you will be able to attach/remove item pouches based on necessity.

2 Likes
7

That’s the idea. There will be disguise perks as well as alternative ways of accessing certain locations such as by parkour or climbing through airvents (if you’re skinny enough) or with hacking (by ranking up hacking in a skills tree) or by using hacking tools similar to the way it has been done in games like Deus Ex, Watchdogs, Fallout, etc.

The catsuit thing sounds cool. I have been thinking of special outfits the player could acquire or create if they wanted something unique.

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8

In terms of scope, this game sounds crazy in the bet possible way :laughing:

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9

I agree with some of the upper posts. Maybe have your character be at an advantage/disadvantage depending on if the clothes fit, like say if your breasts get too fat, your bra breaks, and until it’s fixed you’re at a disadvantage in some way.

10

Maybe there can be certain aspects that actually benefit from having ill-fitting or ripped clothes, like a plus size stripper or a fashion influencer?

11

lol tig 'ol biddies may hinder the player’s ability to shoulder some weapons. Weapon accuracy may suffer. But you may have better chances getting a job at Hooters. (though it may be called something else to avoid copyright infringements) so, there will be advantages and disadvantages.

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12

How about instead of hooters, call it toohers? Easy copyright avoiding! =D

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13

Booty and the Titties.

No one saw that one coming.

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14

For skirts and pants, a big thing you can play around is just the material. A denim skirt is different to a cotton skirt is different to a woolen skirt is different to a double-lined. Then you’ve got the length - micro, mini, knee, maxi, ankle - and other details such as a flared bottom. Fuller skirts tend to be made of lighter materials, a denim skirt lower than knee is pretty rare, but just combining these gives you a good 20+ combos for skirts alone.

For shirts, make sure to combine full size, crop top, tube top, shirt vs tee, how much shoulder does it give away, how low is the neckline, etc. You can just walk into a clothing store and see so many variations.

For bras, size and colour aren’t the only differences. Some are push-up bras, some are plunge style (designed to enhance cleavage), some are strapless, some have or don’t have an underwire, a sports bra is an entirely different category. The amount of support a bra gives you is a literary treasure trove. And of course, there is the all-important question of whether the bra has lace.

Something you might not have considered is lesser-known undergarments. Chemises, shifts, slips, camisoles, you can dive into wikipedia and see a lot of variety. Then of course there’s the different variations on tights and leggings. Don’t forget to add jeggings to the game.

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15

Clothing is a reflection of the society in which it is worn. What people wear should reflect the setting foremost. That doesn’t preclude interesting choices but thought should be put into ‘why’? If there’s a lot of people wearing corsets for instance, perhaps the society still has an idealised waist size. People wearing skits and long-sleeved clothing might indicate an area with stricter social norms. Just like how religions have special garments, there might be unique items only certain people wear.

I suggest being very careful about what you include and categorising them in a way that you minimise the extra amount of text and coding needed to implement every item of clothing. For example, denim jeans and denim shirts have a similar material so you could use a common descriptor for that part of interations with such items.

Also, don’t forget that the more clothing you have, the more description text you will need if that clothing’s state changes during the game.

There are devs here that tried including diverse clothes but have had found it to be a time sink when there are other bits of the game that are more important. Like the body of the person wearing said clothes… :wink:

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16

Very true, probably one of the biggest reasons Cursed’s development halted.

17

Wow, that’s a lot of information to go on. I do want to add abit of diversity to clothing items, but not too much. Since I’ll likely have a lot of different clothing types, styles and sizes to work with I may not even include color at all except for special instances where it matters. Having different color clothing will multiply the amount of work I’ll have to put into clothing, so I’ll just leave out color when it comes to common clothing items and allow the player to just use their imagination as to what color a shirt or pair of yoga pants is. I haven’t even started on developing clothing yet as right now I’m still fleshing out the map and developing NPCs and important items. but I do have thousands of words worth of notes on clothing, item, food, quest and etc ideas, so when it comes time to put it in the developer the concepts will already worked out for the most part. Thanks for your input.

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18

Glad to hear you’re making some good progress, I’m hyped!

19

Clothing is difficult to add to games because of the amount of extra writing you have to do in order to accommodate it. It’s especially difficult for WG focused games if you have descriptions for the size of the PC while wearing the clothes. If you are going to write descriptions for different weights and different sizes of body parts I’d try to keep it as vague as possible to cut down the amount of writing and make the WG text closely parallel across the different clothing types (something like: “her belly bulges her shirt/jacket/coat/insert torso clothing here.” then if it grows have it progress to “her belly stretches her shirt/jacket/coat/insert torso clothing here and peaks out on the bottom” or something like that)
Basically just keep it consistent across multiple articles of clothing to cut down on the work you’re going to have to do.

3 Likes
20

You may find it easy to add a wide variety of colours to a text adventure with minimal effort, if you simply include a list of available colours per material, and give the clothing object an enum or string variable with a randomised value from that list. From there, include the colour variable in the output for the clothing item. This is best done in an object oriented language by overloading the extraction operator.